Links

Layout HTML

Search This Blog

Tuesday, October 16, 2012

Having a job: A Blessing or a Curse?

It's been about a month since I've started working at Benton Express for Infiniti, and learned quite a lot about myself. I'm definitely hard working, take pride in the quality of work I do, and a good team supporter. It just seems to be the kind of worker I am. However, I have also experienced my limits at a warehousing job at a Ross warehouse, albeit I was horribly unprepared.

The day before working at the Ross warehouse, I was doing a more strength-based work at Benton, unloading all the boxes from the truck trailer. It is much more physically demanding than the other positions at Benton, and I was feeling a bit sore after that. After I got home, I wanted to rest, but Vicki dragged me out to her usual volunteering at PetSmart, then to a birthday party immediately after. That's pretty much my entire day outside of home, keeping me from doing my daily routines as well as from blogging like I am now. This kind of thing happens nearly every weekend now, which is why my posts have been intermittent lately.

Being at PetSmart alone is always a problem because the adoptions volunteering is usually from 12 PM to 4 PM, so that's four hours of being stuck in a store that smells like animals and supposedly cleaning chemicals. I don't know about you, or anyone else for the matter, but I seem to have a fairly strong sense of smell. Whenever I walk into a pet store, I get hit with a blast of this animal smell. It isn't something I like smelling for a long time if I could help it. I'm sure there are worse smells out there, but being that I have to deal with bad animal smells at home as well, I'd like to get a break from it when I'm NOT at home as well. I generally spend more time looking at the fish in the fish section, and also check what products are available that I could make use of to make Firion's living quality better, since I'd like him to have a nice living space that I can't have, apparently.

After the usual PetSmart thing, we went to the birthday party, which wasn't quite yet ready. We were the first two to arrive. The problem was, however, the whole party was poorly planned, and wasn't set up on time either. With there not being room inside the house for a six people party, the party was moved to the backyard. By the time the table and the decorations were set up for the party outside however, it was already getting dark outside. Being that I'm not much of an outdoors person either, naturally I did not feel comfortable at the party. ._. There were mosquitoes buzzing about, which is typical of Florida, and as it turns out, when food was brought out, there were ants getting on the plates as well. Who knows if any of us ate any due to how dark it was outside; the party was only lit by a few candles, weak, battery-powered Christmas lights, and the moonlight. Knowing all this, I couldn't really eat all I wanted; not to mention the food wasn't that great either.

The party somehow lasted past 11 PM, and I was already very sleepy at this point. This was a Saturday, so I had gotten up at around 3 AM to get to work. Yet, Vicki thought that it was okay for us to stay as late as 12:45 AM to listen to the birthday girl tell multiple, long, drawn-out stories about what she experienced. One or two stories is totally fine, but each story lasted much longer than it needed to to tell them, and there were just simply too many stories that she had. This is the kind of thing that made me start writing journal entries, really, so that I can tell my story, and if people are interested enough in reading them, they could. This post is exactly just that, and by no means do I shove these stories down people's throats or try to drown people in them with how long or drawn-out these are. Stop reading these posts labeled as Rant as they usually pertain to what qualms I have with what I have experienced, although I haven't even exactly made my main point of this post. I guess to those who want the main point, scroll down to the bottom for the TL;DR version.

By the time we got home, it was past 1 AM. I went straight to bed after getting home, after being up 22 hours in a row, with very little of those hours being for my own leisure time. The next morning, before I got enough sleep, mind you, I get a phone call for more manual labor work, this time at a Ross warehouse. They offered $8.00 an hour, was closer to home, and was during the afternoon to night time. I was unsure about it, especially given what I had to go through the previous day, but Infiniti told me that I didn't have to go to work on Monday if I took this job instead. Of course, Vicki told me to jump at that opportunity for a better job, so I accepted. However, I didn't have enough time to eat a big enough breakfast to make up for the lackluster dinner I had the night before, and had to rush down there to get to the warehouse. Honestly though, we got there about 20 minutes early, which could have been spent on getting myself enough food, but Mariano, being the paranoid person that he is, insisted on leaving immediately to get there on time. I can understand that, especially being the first time going to this place as well, although it was a place that we've been before when we were simply "exploring" the area.

Once work started, I realized there were an awful lot of big boxes at this warehouse. Majority of them were big, and were much heavier in average compared to the boxes at Benton Express. The equipments that this warehouse had was much nicer, like the roller conveyers, and automated belt conveyers, but still required a lot more effort to lift up the heavy boxes onto the conveyers. I quickly learned that I wasn't going as fast as the other workers wanted me to, and tried my best to keep up with the others there. However, given my poor conditions of malnutrition, lack of sleep and rest, and my previous day at Benton being a rough job that used my muscles a lot as well, I simply could not keep up with them even at my best. I felt my left arm falling numb from the lack of oxygen that it was getting for all the muscles I was using in it, and I didn't have enough energy to fuel my muscles either due to the lack of sustenance. I was sweating profusely, and made sure to rehydrate myself as well, but it just simply wasn't good enough.

I knew I wasn't going fast enough, and that drove me to work harder since I hate being the one that's holding people up from getting things done. It is part of my nature to stay out of people's way, whether if it's at work by keeping a steady flow of my job for the others to do their part, or even in traffic, I keep an eye on all the cars around me and what they want to do, and communicate with them with proper road etiquette such as blinkers and eye contact which many Florida drivers seem to neglect. Despite all that drives me though, I was sure that I was getting in the other workers' nerves for being slower than they wanted me to be. It was a pretty horrible feeling that I had, being the source of negative energy from my co-workers, on top of being dead tired and hungry. When break time finally came, I felt so relieved to get some food that I had brought for lunch. After that, I had a little more strength to maintain a decent pace for the rest of the day, but was still too tired to work as fast as the others there.

In the end, I knew that I wouldn't be able to do this job at the Ross warehouse regularly, despite the better hours, slightly better pay, and closer location. After talking with who seemed to be the boss there, their workers at the warehouse are paid by the task instead of by hour, so they all wanted to get the job done ASAP so they can go home, while still getting paid the same amount. That certainly explains the rush and the annoyance that I felt from the coworkers. However, it's still not a very nice work environment compared to how it is at Benton Express, in my opinion. By the end of all this, I realized that my gloves got holes on them, I nicked my shirt, and was pocket calling, texting, and E-mailing Vicki while I was working, due to how I had to use my entire body to be able to lift up some of the heavier boxes; some of which I couldn't lift up at all by myself. I ended up getting home at around 9 PM, I believe.

I've been going through quite a lot of ridiculous situations with Vicki wanting to go out somewhere when I still have work on the weekends, and she hasn't been very appreciative about that either. Even on weekdays, I get woken up by Mariano when he comes to wake up Vicki for her to go to work, and it greatly increases the amount of time I have to stay in bed to get enough sleep as it takes me an hour or two to fall asleep. I end up not getting enough sleep, leaving me in a very tired state all week. I am generally cranky when I don't get enough sleep, and it really isn't something that I can help it seems. Vicki should already know that, but she still bothers me about things due to her laziness and selfishness. In fact, a couple of nights ago, on a day that I worked, Vicki gave me a bunch of shit for not thinking straight and gave a bad response, and "being a pain in the ass" for being groggy. Wtf, I shouldn't have to deal with her bullshit like that, since all this is because I finally have a job, which she was giving me bullshit about previously for not having one before. What kind of girlfriend is she to not care about me and my lack of sleep? Am I just someone for her to use for money and convenience? I was accepting of her and her job's schedules, and in fact, I was being supportive for when she needed me because of that. Where the hell is my support? I felt like slapping her for her selfish bullshit.

I feel good about myself for having SOME sort of job than not having one. Not that I was being a lazy bum without having one or anything either, since I was working towards self-teaching myself Java and CSS currently, while also applying for jobs which can be quite time consuming. But it turns out that my girlfriend has a problem either way. It's pretty demoralizing honestly, but having a job will give me more power to do more in the future. I just need to make the best of the situation and grab the opportunity to turn these bad situations into something better.

TL;DR - The point of this post is, Vicki complained about me not having a job, and twisted her words to make it sound like I hadn't been trying to find one in the past 2 years despite what efforts I had gone through to look for one. Now that I have one, she complains that I don't want to go out to places with her late at night when I have to work in the morning, giving me no sympathy for my need to sleep when I wake up at 3 AM to go to work, or that forcing me to stay up greatly hinders my ability to function at my usual, high potential. Ultimately, all this proves how selfish Vicki is, and how it is making me more of a wreck than I need to be.